


Leave Your Armor on the Battlefield

by storiesfortravellers



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Grief, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-20
Updated: 2013-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-24 02:50:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/934409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moira's POV on how grief changes Malcolm over time, and how Moira deals with her guilt about helping Malcolm.</p><p>For this prompt at comment-fic on lj: "Arrow, Malcolm Merlyn+Moira Queen, A Grief Observed"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leave Your Armor on the Battlefield

Moira had always liked Rebecca. 

She didn’t really fit in with their circle – Rebecca was bored by talk of real estate, commodities, hedge funds. And whenever everyone else spoke of charity in terms of fundraising galas and how good it feels to help the disadvantaged, Rebecca would start railing against systemic oppression and institutional bias and other things that nobody had been forced to listen to since college. But Moira felt like Rebecca was the only one in their tight-knit group who didn’t treat every conversation as a well-rehearsed negotiation (including Moira herself). It was fresh air in a stale room, and so Moira didn’t mind if it was occasionally a little bit bracing.

Sometimes Moira thought that if she had been Rebecca’s friend first, she would have advised her not to marry Malcolm. Malcolm, who thought he ran the world, who could never stand to lose an argument, who thought that people got what they deserved so there was no reason to pity them. She had always found Malcolm charming, funny, and smart, even as she sensed an iciness underneath. Moira even had real affection for him once, and always enjoyed his conversation. But she didn’t think he and Rebecca had much in common besides being brilliant and not ever being able to take no for answer.

Moira, however, was a good observer of human nature. And when she saw them together, the way their hands gently brushing together when they passed each other a plate, the way they just slightly leaned toward each other when they sat, the way they snuck kisses in the hallway when they thought no one could see, Moira knew: that was real love. 

She was surprised and pleased to realize that her old friend Malcolm had let someone burrow so deeply into that cold heart of his. Later, she would wish that Malcolm had never found love at all.

\--

The day after Rebecca died, Robert called to her from the study, where he was on the phone.

“It’s the paper. They want quotes from her friends for the obituary. Malcolm won’t return their calls,” Robert said. His eyes were red. 

Moira nodded. “Tell them that this is tremendous loss. For her family and friends, but also for the whole city. Starling City will never be the same without her.” 

Robert nodded, giving her a look of gratitude. He repeated her words into the phone.

A few days after she learned of Malcolm’s plan, Moira suddenly recalled what she had said that day, recorded for all posterity. A chill ran up her arms and shoulders. She felt, in that moment, like Cassandra: the fearful prophet, powerless to stop the things she predicted.

\--

At Rebecca’s funeral, Malcolm didn’t speak. He let others do that as he stood there, staring into space.

After, he was barely responsive as her many friends offered him their condolences. He gave small appreciative smiles, just enough so that no one could say that he wasn’t handling it well, Moira observed. But Malcolm was closer to Moira and Robert than he was to almost anyone (except of course for his wife). And Moira could see the truth, plain as day on Malcolm’s face.

He was lost.

He was not the same man. 

Moira looked over at Tommy then, small and scared and trying so hard not to cry. He kept looking up at his father, wanting a hand to hold, wanting to be picked up and embraced. Wanting anything, any words at all, from his father. 

Malcolm didn’t look at Tommy. He just stared emptily and shook hands quickly in that obligatory way. Moira’s heart broke for the child.

Then Oliver let go of Moira’s hand, weaved his way and cut to the front of the line. He hugged Tommy as tight as he could, and even though Tommy’s hands stayed at his sides, he leaned his head on Oliver’s shoulder as Oliver patted him on the back. Two little boys in little black suits, growing up so much faster than anyone should.

Moira thought that she had never been prouder of her son than she was at that moment.

When Moira finally reached Malcolm, he gave the same empty look and polite handshake as he had everyone else. It was like they were strangers.

\--

When Malcolm announced that he was taking an extended leave, Moira felt a cold dread in her stomach. She knew that Malcolm must be planning something. 

Robert thought she was being overly concerned. “I would need to disappear from the world for a while too, if I lost the love of my life.”

She smiled at him, sadly, and agreed not to look into Malcolm’s whereabouts.

Mostly because she had already looked and was all out of leads.

When he came back after two years, Malcolm was good natured, sociable even. As charismatic as ever. He easily slid back into his place as the most powerful executive in Starling City.

Moira saw right through him. He used to be a man, a friend. Now he was something else, all sharp angles, determination and anger and heat. 

“Oh, how I’ve missed you, Moira,” Malcolm had said when they saw each other for the first time after his “trip.” The tightness, the insincerity, of his voice pinged like steam in an empty pan.

“I’m so glad you’re back,” Moira had answered, and she saw him smile discerningly at her in response. He knew that she was every bit as insincere as he was.

She wasn’t surprised when Robert started getting invited to secret meetings and she wasn’t. Robert assumed it was a boys’ club thing, but Moira knew better.

\--

When Robert and Oliver were killed at sea, Moira knew it was her own fault.

She had seen that Malcolm had become a weapon. But she didn’t realize that he was a weapon aimed at what she loved most.

He asked her to his office to tell her that he wanted her compliance, her loyalty. She could take Robert’s place as his right hand.

She told him where to shove it. She threatened to go to the police. She asked him how he could become such a pathetic excuse of a man. He smirked in response and explained that she didn’t have a choice.

“Rebecca would be ashamed of you! She would hate the man you are now!”

As soon as she said it, as soon as she saw the look in his eyes, she stepped back. She looked down and realized that her hands were shaking.

Malcolm stood, slowly, and stalked toward her. He gripped her shoulders, tight enough to bruise. “Rebecca didn’t understand what the Glades really are. That naivety got her killed. And unless you want your naivety to get you – and Thea – killed, you will help me cleanse this city of the plague that killed my wife. Do you understand, Moira?”

“Yes,” Moira said immediately. “Yes, anything.” There was anger in her voice, but also pleading; they both knew the word “Thea” would win this fight for good. There was still something left for Malcolm to take from her, and it struck her that Malcolm might have spared Thea for exactly that reason.

“Good,” Malcolm said and smiled, took his hands off Moira as if nothing had happened. “You’re one of the most capable people I know, and it will be good to have your loyalty. I’ll see you at the meeting on Saturday.”

Moira turned around and left, still trembling. As she was about to walk out the door, Malcolm said, calmly, as if he were ordering a purchase of stocks, “And if you ever use my wife’s name against me again, I will cut you in half with a sword.” 

Moira didn’t turn around. She swallowed, grabbed the door handle, and walked out as fast as she could.

\--

There were times, after the shipwreck, when Moira wanted to sink into her grief. When she wanted to let her grief turn her into a monster.

She fantasized sometimes about killing Tommy. To let Malcolm know how it feels when your friend takes your baby. 

She would never do it, of course. The boy was innocent. And she remembered that poor little boy he once was, and knew that she wanted to protect Tommy, not hurt him.

And Tommy was so much like Oliver, always had been. Even though losing Oliver had changed him too, made him more mature, more serious. Every year while Oliver was gone, Tommy sent Moira flowers on Mother’s Day, the same bouquet that Oliver always did. Tommy claimed that he remembered what Oliver always ordered, but Moira knew that Oliver was clueless about flowers and had always gotten Tommy to tell him which bouquet would be best. The flowers from Tommy were a kind gesture, a beautiful gesture. But every year when she saw them, she started sobbing, she fell onto the floor and cried there until Thea or Walter found her, and then she would stay in her room in her pajamas for two weeks. But she could never bring herself to ask Tommy to stop sending them; she needed those damn flowers.

But she was glad that Malcolm had virtually no relationship with Tommy. He didn’t deserve to be close to his son.

It was because of Malcolm, because of his isolation, that Moira decided to marry Walter. She had always liked him, and she had relied on him when Robert first died. It would have been easy, though, to listen to her pain instead of her hope, to push Walter away and let herself and Thea wallow in isolation until it drove them both into something they'd rather not be. But she didn't want to choose that path. 

People raised eyebrows at how soon it happened, but she could hardly care. There were so many times when she thought that if only Malcolm had found a way to move on, to focus on his child, to consider finding someone new, then he would have spared a lot of people a lot of pain. She wasn’t going to let what happened to Malcolm happened to her.

He could force her to work with him. He could never force her to become him.

\--

Years later, Moira has her son back. She has her son and her daughter, both of them scarred in ways that they will never let her see, but she has them. 

She also has a dead husband and now a kidnapped husband.

Still, she has more than she used to, so much more. But it also means that there is so much more that Malcolm could take from her. 

Moira would put her family’s survival above everything and everyone. She tells herself this every day as she stares, sullen-eyed, into the mirror in the morning. As she tries, uselessly, to sleep at night.

She thinks that this is her reason.

When her son asks her for her help, when she sees her son look at her like she’s the shell of the woman she used to be, she wants to defend herself. She wants to tell him that her family is worth the Glades.

She wants to tell him that the Glades murdered Rebecca. And when they did that, they murdered Malcolm too. The Glades murdered Robert, and they murdered Oliver, they murdered Thea and they murdered her. The Glades destroyed her life and she felt no pity for them.

She realizes then that she has not avoided her fate at all.

She has become the monster, the remorseless soldier, she never wanted to be. She has become a terror in her children’s eyes.

She says something else to Oliver, some excuse. She wants a way out of this, she wants to avoid any more grief.

But she knows, in the back of her mind, that she would do anything to not be Malcolm Merlyn. 

When she makes her announcement to the press, she knows that Malcolm will kill her. 

She knows that when she is gone, she will be grieved in ways that Malcolm never will.


End file.
